When I visit my ninety-eight-year old mother-in-law in the nursing home, we pray together. I also bring her holy Communion and a vanilla milk shake, both of which she loves. While she always yearns for the Eucharist and truly draws life and sustenance from communion with Jesus, it is during our time of prayer that life seems to blossom around us. In sharing our faith in this old familar way, we are lifted beyond any sadness or loneliness we might be feeling. We begin "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." With synchronous movements, we enact this ritual that is, and always has been, the start of our lifetime of prayer. The gesture is so easy that even someone frail and ill and confined to bed is gently nudged into action. My mother-in-law reaches fingers to forehead, and then gracefully touches her chest and each shoulder. Her shakiness, her anxiety, seem to vanish, and she is more her old self, confident, purposeful, as in the days when she was vigorous, in charge of her life -- baking endless delicious pies, tending to the flowers in her yard, going to daily Mass and church meetings. Usually she's chilly and constantly asks me to pull the blanket up under her chin--but when she makes the Sign of the Cross, she doesn't worry if the blanket slips down. It seems the embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit takes away the cold that tends to creep deep inside her. Sometimes when Yvonne, the lady in the next bed, is awake, she prays with us. It is then--despite voices that are weak and wobbly and intrusive sounds from the hallway--that this dim room with four beds is suddenly transformed with hushed holiness. Jesus says: "When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you" (Mt 6:6, NAB). I believe we are praying as Jesus wants us to pray. We have "closed the door" on all distractions, reached into the depths of our spirits ( our "inner rooms" ), and we are being rewarded by feeling closer to God and to one another. In spite of the circumstances, almost beyond reason ( but not beyond belief), the best of everthing is here: a richness, a hopefulness that is true and real. In his encyclical letter On Christian Hope ("Spe Salvi"), Pope Benedict XVI writes, "There are things that are hoped for: the whole, true life." Our "faith draws the future into the present" (7) so that however difficult the present may be, it is touched by the future promise of all we hope for -- the promise of eternal life. Although none of us can know exactly what is meant by the term eternal life, Pope Benedict explains that it would be "like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment ... in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy: (12). Jesus expresses it this way: "I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you" (Jn 16:22). . | Pope Benedict goes on to say that the whole, true life is not an isolated life, but "is linked to a lived union" with others. When the solitary individual is joined to a community of faith, then our gaze can "open out to the source of joy, to love itself -- to God" (14). (Benedict XVI, "Spe Salvi" 2007 Libreria Editrice Vaticana.) This room in this nursing home in Central Valley, California, could be any room in the world that is the final home of any aged or terminally ill person. And yet here and now, the room is also beautiful: a sacred place, shimmering with God's Love and grace. As we pray the Hail Mary, my mother-in-law and Yvonne launch into the words as if they love this prayer, as if they are hungry for the words, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...." It's as if a light has come on within, and they remember where they fit. Our Blessed Mother, whom we have just asked to pray to us, shows us with her life how to pray. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, "her prayer cooperates in a unique way with the Father's plan of loving kindness.... She, whom the Almighty made 'full of grace,' responds by offering her whole being: 'Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.' 'Fiat': this is Christian prayer: to be wholly God's, because he is wholly ours" (2617). Once when Yvonne's son came to visit, she told him I'd brought her Communion and we'd prayed together. He looked doubtful; his mother tends toward confusion. As I spoke up to confirm his mother's words, the peace of Jesus seemed to glow in her blue eyes. She sparkled with confident joy -- which no one could take from her. This then is what our prayer brings to us: the light-hearted certainty and well-being that comes from knowing we are wholly God's because God is wholly ours. In spite of their limitations, these women can still live with spiritual purpose. They are still able to obey the greatest commandments: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. (See Mk 12:30-31.) With their long life experience of loving others, of being in relationship--with all its worries and heartaches--they know the urgent personal need as well as the vast human need for prayer. And they believe in the power of prayer. They know, as Annie Dillard suggests, that "to entreat and to intercede is to transform situations powerfully.... True prayer surrenders to God; that willing surrender itself changes the situation a jot or two by adding power which God can use" ("Holy Sparks: A Prayer for the Silent God," as quoted in Best Spiritual Writing 2000). It is no small thing for a ninety-eight-year old woman to whisper a prayer! Maybe our prayers ease the grief of the woman in the wheelchair out in the hallway who is always clutching a doll to her breast and crying out, "I want my baby...I want my mother...." And maybe our prayers help the other two women in this room, who are usually sleeping, sometimes deep in disturbed dreams from which they shout or call out. And maybe, too, the whole world is gentled just a bit because of who we are and what we do. This is our life of faith: to be able to say our prayers, to offer our whole being to God, whatever our age or situation. Here in this place, in these blessed moments we share, the things we hope for are already present in us: there is no coldness, no uncertainty or fear, only beautiful life...the whole, true life! |